Doug Marrone's biggest fear relative to Saturday's annual spring game at the Carrier Dome is injuries. Should his Orange players escape that competition unscathed, he'll likely break out the kind of smile, above, that he flashed last December during a media briefing prior to the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium. Photo by Frank Ordonez /The Post-Standard

Syracuse, N.Y. -- As Doug Marrone seems to be one of those rare football coaches who appears to have some semblance of a life beyond blocking and tackling (the man does, after all, put down the whistle long enough to take in the odd Chiefs game with his kids), he was worth approaching about the creeping zaniness within his sport.

We’re talking about spring football here. Specifically, about those spring games annually played on the campuses across Football America -- the affairs that last year drew gatherings of 91,000-plus at Alabama . . . of nearly 78,000 at Nebraska . . . of 65,000 and change at Ohio State . . . of more than 63,000 at Auburn . . . of an estimated 55,000 at Penn State.

We’re talking about 16 different programs that attracted in excess of 30,000 religionists for their spring-football scrums in 2010. We’re talking about a total attendance that could exceed 1.5 million this time around. We’re talking about an ESPN schedule that calls for 14 such exercises to be telecast this month with talking heads such as Brent Musburger, Urban Meyer, Matt Millen, Mark May, Chris Spielman, Andre Ware and others yakking about this five-yard gain or that incomplete pass over the middle.

And all for glorified scrimmages waged five months before season openers with play-calling heavy on vanilla beans because one can never be sure how many spies are in the house.

Marrone’s take?

“I believe in balance in life,” he said the other day. “I have to be honest. I’ve seen some things in football that I think are unbalanced. I think we all have to have our priorities correct.”

Doug, whose Syracuse University squad will hold its spring game on Saturday at the Carrier Dome beginning at 1 p.m., must be pleased with us because we’ve yet to sip from the village well that services so many of those other college football programs out there.

Fact is, only 5,184 curious souls showed up for Marrone’s first spring game in 2009 and merely 4,752 rubber-neckers took a gander at last year’s exercise. That’s an average of 4,968 . . . or the number of folks who’ll line up outside the Bryant-Denny Stadium bathrooms at halftime when the Crimson Tide plays its “A Day Game,” also on Saturday, down there in Tuscaloosa.

But for those looking for a bit of cause-and-effect between a community’s embrace of the local club’s spring game and that outfit’s consequent on-field excellence, for those who believe in-the-seats allegiance begins not around Labor Day but before Palm Sunday and that victories commensurate with that springtime fervor will naturally flow, be advised of this:

The flip side, meanwhile, is that four other teams -- Penn State, Florida, Texas and Georgia -- combined to lure close to 190,000 tailgating pilgrims to their four spring tilts last April . . . and finished a cumulative 26-25 (and 13-19 in conference play) in the campaign that followed.

The conclusion to be reached, then, is that there isn’t much of a conclusion to be reached.

“I think some people point to big crowds at spring football games to show how much the fans care about this sport,” said Marrone, who is coming off an 8-5 campaign. “But for me it’s more important for people to come to our regular games. People have used our attendance against us in recruiting. We have lost recruits because of the attendance at our games. But we have never lost a recruit because of what we draw to the spring game.”

One imagines that Marrone’s coaching peers in the Big East Conference are similarly ambivalent regarding those comparatively few keisters in the pews at their spring games because, for the most part, the bunch of them are apparently surrounded by patrons with interests beyond such things. Indeed, that entire league drew less for its eight contests last year (77,064) than either Alabama or Nebraska did on its own.

Which may or may not speak to life’s options in Tuscaloosa and/or Lincoln.

“Some people are envious of those big crowds for all those spring games,” Marrone said. “I’m not. I’m trying to get this football team better. I’m trying to get people to come out and watch us play in the fall. I’m trying to get people to support the program. In some parts of the country, football is to live and die for. Some people are like that. But I’d like to hope that nobody would, you know, injure himself because of the way a game turned out.”

Or because of the way that backup left tackle shed -- or, omigosh, didn’t shed -- his blocker in April.

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Syracuse University’s spring football game will be played on Saturday at the Carrier Dome beginning at 1 p.m. It will mark the third such thing of the Doug Marrone Era.

In Marrone’s first season on the job as the Orange’s head coach (in 2009), the game drew an announced crowd of 5,184. Last season (2010), that number was announced at 4,752.

What follows are the “official” spring-football game crowds drawn last spring by those teams that ultimately finished among the Associated Press’ final Top 25 poll, released at the end of the 2010 season.

Note: Six other programs drew announced crowds last spring of 30,000 or more: Michigan (35,000), Tennessee (35,000), Mississippi State (34,127), Mississippi (30,229), Arkansas (30,000) and Michigan State (30,000).

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This is how the Big East Conference fared in spring-football game attendance in 2010:

(Bud Poliquin's columns, his "To The Point" observations and his on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, he can be heard Mondays through Fridays (10 a.m.-12 noon), on the "Bud & the Manchild" sports-talk radio show on The Score 1260-AM. E-mail: bpoliquin@syracuse.com.)